Beards, Booze and Blues: The Hitchhikers' Guide

Menu

Michigan Water Blues

“If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” goes the famous song about New York City. Is there a place — a city, a school, a company — about which you think (or thought) the same? Tell us why, and if you ever tried to prove that claim.

Most young naïve, wide eyed dreamers from the UK often think of “making it in London” whereas my dream laid somewhat further a field. In Michigan of all places; thanks to the advent of the internet, MSN groups and Messenger the world suddenly became a much smaller place and I befriended a delightful young American girl from the State of Michigan by the name of Andrea. We met through our common interest that was our mutual love of Jazz and Blues music and over the period of the next few months we rapidly grew to knew each other better and metaphorically got a lot closer. Then one day one of us, I can’t recall who, picked up on the idea of “wouldn’t it be nice to record an album together” and for a few weeks we heavily discussed this idea of producing a set of albums together and even started thinking of track listings and how the album covers would look. Of course we knew this was a dream and it would never really become a reality but the idea was there. It soon transpired we had more common interests such as sci-fi and very similar politics and I think there was a very naïve budding romance hanging around in the early days. New Orleans was the next ambition, go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras together which was less of an impossible dream I think. Either way she invited me to stay over for Thanksgiving and well… that’s another story. But lets just say a new twist on making it in Michigan now haunts my dreams. One day, I shall go back, yes I shall go back…